Helvete was the Oslo record shop opened by Øystein Aarseth, also known as Euronymous, a few months after Dead’s suicide. It became a physical center for Norway’s emerging Black Metal scene: a place where records, performances of identity, and Euronymous’s influence converged. The shop’s importance exceeded its poor finances. Its dark interior and theatrical atmosphere made the scene’s aesthetic tangible, while its shelves and basement gave musicians and visitors places to meet, listen, stay, and form connections.

Origins and purpose

Euronymous had continued with his projects after Dead’s death, foremost among them the plan to open a record shop. He had already re-established Deathlike Silence Productions and released an album by Merciless, and hoped to reissue Mayhem’s Deathcrush. To finance such ambitions, however, he recognized that the shop could not sell only the most uncompromising music. He initially imagined a specialist metal store, but as Death Metal attracted young listeners, he adjusted the business to that market while insisting that its identity remain Black Metal. He preferred selling Judas Priest to Napalm Death, yet accepted that less extreme stock could help pay for records he considered more significant.

The name Helvete, the Norse word for Hell, announced the distinction between commercial necessity and the image Euronymous meant to cultivate. He planned for the shop to look like a black church, and even considered making its interior completely dark so customers would need torches to find the records. The business was at once a means of raising money and an attempt to shape what counted as authentic Black Metal. Its commercial concessions did not erase that ambition; they made the shop’s deliberate opposition between ordinary trade and an asserted underground identity part of its character.

The shop’s physical atmosphere

Helvete occupied an inconspicuous storefront in Oslo’s Old Town, in the East End, an area described as lower-income and having a high proportion of immigrants and young people. Blackened windows concealed the interior from the street. From outside, the premises could be mistaken for one of the porn shops or massage parlors posing as brothels found in low-rent neighborhoods. The obscurity ended at the threshold: inside, the décor made the shop’s chosen identity unmistakable.

A female mannequin in a hooded cloak, evocative of a witch in a Hammer horror film, was among the first things visitors encountered. A skull stood on the counter, and lit candles deepened the gloomy atmosphere. Euronymous’s more ambitious schemes, including tombstones made from polystyrene, were never completed. The decorations could frighten Christians who entered to investigate what they understood as the Devil’s activity, but the theatricality was also knowingly cultivated. Kiss picture discs on the wall suggested that Euronymous understood the shop’s horror-inflected style as performance as well as provocation.

The basement extended Helvete beyond retail. It was used for photo sessions, parties, and other gatherings, and could provide a place to sleep for guests or for people who lived too far away to get home after a night out. Varg Vikernes stayed there when visiting Oslo. Use of the space was gradually restricted after some visitors began taking girls there whom they had met while drinking. In time, damp and clammy conditions made the cellar unusable. Its changing functions trace the shop’s movement from practical gathering place toward a space whose disorder and limits were increasingly difficult to manage.

A meeting place and source of influence

Helvete acquired a substantial following even though its customer base was small. The book describes specialist record shops as benefiting from the habits of subcultures whose members seek out everything within their chosen genre. In Helvete’s case, this made the store a meeting point for the nascent Black Metal scene and for a wider range of people interested in heavier music. The concurrent Death Metal boom brought customers who did not share the Black Metal scene’s outlook. Euronymous nevertheless sold to them, stocking, among others, Metallica and Godflesh.

The shop’s importance lay not only in who entered, but in what Euronymous communicated there. Metalion later characterized its opening as the creation of the Norwegian Black Metal scene, emphasizing Euronymous’s influence on young customers and his insistence on distinguishing what was real from what was not. Musicians associated with Immortal and Darkthrone had been involved with Death Metal before Euronymous introduced them to his model of Black Metal. Metalion also described Emperor’s predecessor, Thou Shalt Suffer, as a Death Metal group that changed direction into Black Metal. In his account, the influence could be heard in the transition between Darkthrone’s first and second albums, particularly A Blaze in the Northern Sky. Helvete thus served as a shop, but also as a place where taste and scene membership were taught and contested.

That influence extended beyond Norway. Swedish musicians visited Oslo and spent time at Helvete; the book connects these visits and Euronymous’s Deathlike Silence label to cooperation and cross-pollination between the Norwegian and Swedish scenes. It describes the emergence of an alleged Swedish Black Circle in parallel with its Norwegian neighbor. The store was therefore a local meeting point with connections reaching across the national scene, not simply a backdrop to activity in Oslo.

Image, authority, and closure

Euronymous tried to embody the same aesthetic he gave the shop. He dressed in black from head to foot, dyed his hair black, wore knee-high boots and a leather biker jacket bearing badges, and cultivated a stern, serious manner that could verge on theatrical pomposity. The atmosphere at Helvete reinforced the impression of strictness. A member of Emperor recalled that people were serious there, respected established figures, and initially chose their words carefully around Euronymous. The shop’s authority was consequently both social and staged: its setting made deference visible, while Euronymous’s conduct helped maintain the image.

Media accounts further magnified the association between Helvete and the scene’s claims of organized menace. In a Kerrang! article, Aarseth and Vikernes spoke of a group called the Satanic Terrorists and presented themselves as members. Aarseth claimed that ten inner-circle members directed a larger body of Black Metal followers and that Helvete provided an economic basis for the terrorism; he also said he avoided participating in crimes because his arrest would bring down the movement. These were claims made in a sensational interview, not proof that the shop literally organized every crime attributed to the scene. The article nevertheless made the store part of the public image of a coordinated underground. Vikernes’s newspaper remarks about the Åsane church arson accomplice, Jørn Inge Tunsberg, also had a consequence: Tunsberg was irritated by Vikernes’s description of him and later spoke to police in part for that reason.

The scrutiny surrounding revelations about church fires eventually brought Helvete’s operation to an end. A few months before Euronymous was murdered, his parents pressed him to close the shop. They had helped finance it and were upset by the negative publicity and the attention from police and media. Vikernes later mocked Euronymous’s dependence on his parents as inconsistent with the black and evil persona he projected. Another account of the shop depicts that tension in miniature: a journalist reportedly found that Euronymous would not open Helvete because his grandmother had forbidden him to speak to the media. The store’s closure ended its role as the scene’s gathering place, but did not undo the influence attached to it. Helvete had made a commercial address into a center of musical authority, social contact, and carefully fashioned menace; its history also exposed how vulnerable that authority was to the ordinary pressures of money, family, and public attention.